How to Pick an Attribution Model

Which truth is right for you?

Picking a Model

First of all, let's all admit that you can dream up a model to justify any desired outcome. The goal is to pick a model you believe in and allow it to show you the results.
Once you're comfortable with the modeling itself, you can experiment with different models, but how do you know which is right for your business? There is no perfect answer.

Each model is "correct" and the resulting data is only as good as the model. You don't want to use a model for some time and then find out that it's weighting things you don't value!
Here are a few tips for picking a model, based on your customers' buying patterns.

For how long does your customer research before purchasing?

What is the time between a customer first learning about your product and completing a purchase? That is, how impulsive is it?

Impulse Purchases

Very impulsive purchase cycles should heavily weight the last interaction. The models Last Click or Time Decay give all or a majority of credit to the interactions closest to the event.

Medium Impulse

If your customer does some research, but not tons, then consider Time Decay. It still gives weight to the last touch, but gives credit to the rest of their experiences too.

Research Based Purchases

If you have a very long conversion cycle, with customers taking their time and comparing their options, you want a model that will reinforce the marketing touchpoints long before they are ready to pull the trigger. Linear and Position Based both give lots of credit to the starting models without neglecting those close to purchase.

Content Marketing

Finally, if you are doing lots of content marketing you should consider a model that gives credit to the beginning of the customers journey, since content marketing tends to build a longer funnel.

Model Consistency

These models only work if you use them to consistently measure the performance of every channel. For example, it makes no sense to say that your Email medium is doing great with last-click model and your paid campaigns do great with time decay.

Get started and experiment with a few models, then pick one and use it for a longer period.

Attribution.io saves all of your original data, so you can view all historic activities using any model. Experiment with new models without fear of losing data.

Just get started

Don't be intimidated by the models or which is right for you. The best way forward is to start using attribution models and soon you'll figure out which model fits your customer behaviors best.

Most clients find that simply having a clear view of their results changes how they think about their marketing efforts.